


Manly Men

by msgordo (kipplemine)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst and Humor, Blair being supportive and open minded, Feelings, Jim & Henri being terrible at emotions and the recognising thereof, M/M, Misunderstandings, there is possibly a donut conspiracy, this doesn't help in the slightest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kipplemine/pseuds/msgordo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repost from 852. Henri calls upon Jim and Blair to help him with a problem he is having with his partner. This goes about as well as you'd expect. Thanks to Arianna for britpicking and tidying this up for me and for persuading me to repost my old stuff here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manly Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianna/gifts).



“So,” Henri Brown cleared his throat nervously and perched uncomfortably on the side of Jim Ellison’s desk. “Can I talk to you guys about something?” His eyes darted uneasily around the mostly silent bullpen and then fixed back on Ellison and Sandburg, both of whom were looking wary and a little confused at his obvious discomfort. “Something a little…personal?”

Jim raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly as he caught the pounding beat of his fellow detective’s heart and hurriedly dialled down his sense of smell to block the acrid scent of worried sweat. Then he dialled it cautiously back up again when he realised he was also smelling something sweetly familiar under the bitter tang. 

Blair perked up and almost vibrated in his seat with anticipation. He _lived_ for ‘personal’. “Sure, man, what’s up?”

Henri wiped away the light sheen of sweat that was starting to appear on his forehead and croaked, “Uh, not here. You up for a beer after work?” He licked worriedly at his lips as he clarified, “My place, okay? I want it to be just us.”

Blair’s eyebrows shot up at this unheard of request and he exchanged a puzzled look with his partner. “What, not even Rafe?”

Henri sprang to his feet as though Ellison’s desk had just bitten him and shook his head frantically. “No!” He looked around the room furtively and then lowered his voice to a pleading whisper, “Just us, okay? _Please_.”

“Sure, man, sure.” Blair patted Henri’s arm soothingly, shooting a quelling look at Jim when the older man frowned suddenly and sniffed warily at the air, adding appreciably to Henri’s already agitated state. “Whatever you need, buddy, okay?”

“Right. Okay.” Henri gave them a sickly grin, desperately at odds with his usual comfortable flash of a smile, and backed away. “Thanks.” He staggered back into the door and rebounded neatly out into the corridor. “Thanks, guys!”

Blair frowned to himself and followed Henri to watch him stumble away before turning back to Jim, still sniffing the air and looking baffled. “Well that was weird.” He rolled his eyes as Jim ignored him and continued to sniff the air and hastened back to his partner’s side. “Jim, man, you have _got_ to cool it with the sniffing, okay? We’re trying to keep the whole you-know-what-thing under wraps, right? What part of secret don’t you understand?”

Jim stopped sniffing and glared at Blair. “I can smell jelly. Where are you guys hiding the donuts?”

~*~*~*

That evening, just before eight o’ clock, clutching two six packs of beer and barely speaking to each other, Jim and Blair knocked at the door of Henri’s rather nice apartment a few blocks away from the PD.

Jim remained unconvinced that his partner was in no way shape or form connected with the great hide-the-donuts-from-the-Sentinel conspiracy, and Blair thought his beloved Sentinel was a moron with an unhealthy fixation for artery-endangering pastries. 

Thus Henri Brown, already in a fairly twitchy state, was in no way soothed to open his front door to find the two men he was counting on for advice and comfort snarling at each other and conducting a vicious, whispered argument as they played tug of war with the two six packs between them.

“…and you haven’t cleaned the bathroom in three days and you’re still not using the spray. Not even after Sunday night’s tacos!”

Blair gritted his teeth and tugged furiously on the beer that Jim was planning to take all the credit for. “I didn’t have the tacos, you moron, _you_ did. Along with the seven margaritas that you insisted you could handle because you’re a big, beer-guzzling jerk who thinks that anything that doesn’t come in hops or from a grape is a sissy drink and couldn’t possibly knock you on your great big fat _ass_.”

Henri’s mouth sagged slightly. “Uh, guys?”

Jim yanked the beer back towards him and glowered darkly, an expression that most of the PD privately believed was his default setting. “My ass is _not_ fat.” His eyes narrowed as Blair snorted and he spat, “And I was not drunk!”

Henri cleared his throat and tried again. “Guys?”

Blair hooted in derision and fumbled to get a good grip on the beer clutched in Jim’s much bigger hands. “Ri-ight. So you _always_ stumble up the stairs to the loft singing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ at the end of a night out.”

“Gu – “ Henri blinked. ‘Eye of the Tiger?’ He eyed Jim askance; yeah, that figured.

Jim ground his teeth, pulled hard enough on the beer to make Blair lose both his grip and his balance and growled, “I was not singing.”

Blair righted himself by slapping a hand on the wall and growled right back, “You’re telling _me_? I think you woke up every alley cat in the neighbourhood with the yowling!”

“Guys,” Henri hastily stepped forward as Jim made a move with the beer case that looked suspiciously hostile and inserted himself between the two partners before one of them got clocked with the cans. “Thanks for coming.”

Blair and Jim started with surprise when they realised that they were not alone and then both took on sheepish expressions. “H!” Shooting Jim one last glare, Blair grinned up at his friend and clapped him on the shoulder. “No problem, buddy. Man, I have been dying to know what the mystery is all day.”

“Me, too.” Considerably less friendly, Jim shoved the much fought over beer at Henri and fixed him with an intense stare. “Where are you hiding the donuts?”

Henri stared at Jim in confusion and then looked at Blair who was rolling his eyes and looking irritated. “Uh, in the kitchen? But they’re not really hidden, they’re…” He trailed off as Jim shot Blair a triumphant look and shoved past him into the apartment and finished uncertainly, “Right there on the counter.”

Blair herded Henri after Jim and closed the door as the Sentinel turned and jabbed an accusing finger at Henri and then at the box of Krispy Kremes standing in plain sight by Henri’s stove. “Not these donuts; the ones at the station.”

Blair shook his head as he took off his coat and mumbled to himself, “Oh _brother_.”

Henri shifted the beer in his hands nervously. “The donuts at the station? I don’t…” His perplexed face creased in a sudden scowl. “Wait, there’re donuts at the station? How come no one told me? Where?”

Blair shook his head and stomped off in the direction of Henri’s couch. “Oh yeah, the criminals of Cascade are shaking in their boots tonight. With you two crack detectives on the case, no pastry is safe.”

Henri treated Blair’s comment with the contempt it deserved and focused his all attention on Jim where it belonged. “What kind of donuts? Jelly? Cream filled?”

Jim glared at him suspiciously but relaxed slightly when he realised Henri was just as clueless as he was when it came to the location of the much-longed-for delicacies. “I don’t know. I just know they’re there somewhere.” He eyed Henri closely. “I thought when you spoke to me and Sandburg earlier that you…” He caught himself before he admitted to sniffing rather intrusively over his fellow officer and finished lamely, “I thought you’d been eating them.”

“No,” Henri mournfully shook his head and clutched the beer tightly to his belly. “Ever since the subsidised cart got canned by the City, I’ve been hitting the store over on Fifth at lunch.” His mournful look increased. “It just ain’t the same though. I really miss the Donut Girl. She used to save me one of those chocolate sprinkle ones every day.”

Jim looked suspiciously misty-eyed for a moment and mumbled in a husky voice, “Glazed buttermilk for me. Sometimes she even used to save me two if she knew I’d been having a bad day.”

Over on the couch Blair allowed his head to fall against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes wearily. “Oh for the love of all that’s holy, someone save me.”

Jim’s misty look faded as he caught the not-so-circumspect whisper and he returned to his default setting of mightily annoyed. “It’s nice that someone cared enough to notice. Can’t think of anyone else that would give a crap around here.”

Blair snorted. “Nope, neither can I. A guy with your winning personality should be beating them off with a stick.” He sniggered to himself. “Instead, you’re just stuck beating o…” He opened his eyes and found Jim nearly nose to nose with him, glaring and daring him to finish his sentence. Blair smiled brilliantly and said with all the fake cheer he could muster, “So. Beer?”

Henri looked away from the two partners and down at the cans he was still cuddling. “Yeah. You want glasses?” He grinned helplessly at the scornful looks Jim and Blair shot him. “Okay, no glasses. Donuts?”

Jim brightened considerably and straightened up from where he was still bent over Blair. “You got buttermilk?”

~*~*~*

Some twenty minutes later the conversation had ground to a shuddering and uncomfortable halt. They had covered Henri’s brave new choice in paint on his living room walls (mulberry and burgundy), how his neighbourhood was really getting turned around now the Sisters of the Sainted Poor had moved in down the street and were making it their personal mission in life to get to any trolling johns before the hookers could and start earnest conversations about their chances of redemption in the afterlife if they spent twenty bucks on a blow job instead of flowers for their loving wives (not good) and whether or not Henri really _needed_ a forty-two inch flat screen TV taking up a quarter of his available floor space for game nights. 

Brown was obviously forgetting his audience if he was hoping for an impartial opinion because both Blair and Jim started drooling at the thought of forty-two inch wide cheerleaders and offered to go with him on the weekend to pick one out before Henri had even finished speaking.

Blair was quite frankly feeling rather exhausted from having to carry the greater part of the social interaction and was starting to consider faking indigestion from the beer and donuts and disappearing into the bathroom to leave Jim and Henri staring awkwardly at each other until it was time to go home. He sighed heavily to himself; sometimes being the one that actively encouraged bonding and relationships in Jim Ellison’s world just sucked. “So, H, what was it that you wanted to talk to us about?”

Henri looked up from where he was sitting slouched in his lone overstuffed armchair, pinging the tab on his beer can and stared with glassy, panicked eyes at Blair and Jim sitting side by side on his couch. “Uh…”

Blair’s lips twitched in an unwitting smile at the look of sheer horror on Henri’s face and leaned forward to rest his arms on his outspread knees as he fixed his friend with an earnest and encouraging expression. “Look, whatever it is, buddy, we’ll listen with an open mind, okay? We’re all friends here.” He watched as Henri’s eyes shifted nervously to Jim sitting at his side, visibly not radiating reassurance but impatience and vague irritation. Blair leaned back again to elbow Jim pointedly in the ribs. “Right, Jim?”

Jim scowled, retaliated by thumping Blair hard on the thigh and said, “Right.” He eyed Henri in assessment. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“What? No!” Henri looked startled and then worriedly amended, “Not exactly.”

Blair exchanged a subtle look with Jim and remembered Henri’s insistence that Rafe not be a part of that evening’s get together. “Okay. Is Rafe in trouble? Is there something going on at work that you think people need to know about?”

This time the denial was much more emphatic and a great deal more panicked. “No!” Henri jumped to his feet and backed away from his friends. “God, this has nothing to do with work, okay?” He scrubbed a hand over his nervously sweating head and mumbled half to himself, “Maybe this was a mistake; we should all just forget about it and…”

Jim focused in on Henri’s heartbeat and his eyebrows rose in alarm as he listened to the almost dangerously pounding thump. “H, okay, just calm down. Take your time.” He leaned forward to place his beer on the coffee table before him and got to his feet smoothly, hands outstretched in a placating manner. “Henri!” 

Blair scrambled up a good deal less smoothly than Jim and watched wide-eyed as Henri began to exhibit all the early signs of a panic attack as his breath began to shorten and his pupils constricted almost to pin pricks. “Jim, man, _do_ something.”

“Great idea, Chief.” Jim rolled his eyes at his partner and then looked back at Henri. “You want me to cuff him now or wait until he passes out?” He stole another look at Blair’s face and, dammit, there was that damned look that advertised for all to see that Blair Sandburg plainly thought Jim Ellison hung the goddamned moon and there wasn’t a mountain high enough that he couldn’t leap in a single bound if he put his mind and considerable muscle mass into it. _Goddammit_! 

Jim tore his eyes away from Blair’s expectant and slightly impatient face and barked, “ _BROWN_!”

Blair recoiled along with Henri and then swatted Jim’s arm in disgust. “Are you trying to give him heart failure?” He gestured to Henri -- frozen in the middle of the room in mid-mumble -- and informed his partner witheringly, “Yelling at him like some whacked out drill sergeant isn’t gonna help, okay?”

Jim felt vaguely hurt. “He stopped, didn’t he?” He pointed in vindication at Henri still frozen in the middle of his own living room. “I helped.”

Blair snorted and stalked towards Henri to take his arm and lead him back to his abandoned chair. “This is why you shouldn’t talk to people. _Ever_.” He flashed Jim an affectionate grin and waggled his eyebrows to take the sting from the jibe and was rewarded after a moment by Jim’s annoyed glower melting into an equally affectionate smile aimed squarely at Blair.

“That’s why I keep you around, Chief.” Still smiling, Jim reclaimed his place on the couch, stopping briefly on his way past his partner to tug on his hair and then ruffle them into a wild frizz of curls. “You gotta earn your keep somehow, right?”

Blair resettled Henri and threw himself down on the couch in his accustomed place at Jim’s side with a chuckle. “I thought it was for my cooking?”

Jim snorted. “Yeah. Green slime and leaves, that’s the way to my heart.” He grinned down at Blair’s offended face and then looked away and focused all of his considerable attention on Henri who was still looking like he was two steps away from a firing squad and they’d forgotten to provide the blindfold and cigarette. “Okay, Brown, what’s going on?”

Henri met Jim’s eyes uncomfortably and then darted to stare equally uncomfortably at Blair sitting -- for once -- quietly at his friend’s side. He held Blair’s inquisitive gaze for another few moments and then blurted out, “You two!”

Jim’s eyebrows lowered in confusion and he said slowly, “Excuse me?”

Henri swallowed noisily and his left eye developed a slight tic. “You and Sandburg. You’re close, right?” He swallowed again. “Like, _really_ close.”

Jim and Blair swapped identical confused and slightly wary looks, and then Blair shrugged uneasily. “Uh, sure?” He stared in fascination at Henri’s twitching eye. “You okay, man?”

“I mean, it’s not like people don’t know how close you are, right?” Henri ignored Blair’s question, instead staring earnestly at his two baffled friends and waved his hands aimlessly in the air. “Even the guys down at the station.”

Jim frowned, uncomfortable as always at articulating anything even vaguely connected to his emotions, saying slowly, “I guess.”

“You even live together.” Henri nodded to himself, oblivious to Blair and Jim’s silent confusion opposite him. “That’s gotta say something, right?”

Jim snorted. “Yeah. It says Sandburg’s too cheap to get his own place.” He grunted in protest as a sharp elbow dug without mercy into his ribs.

“ _Or_ ,” Blair smiled up at him with all the sweetness of a lion about to rip the throat out of a zebra. “It says that someone else is damn grateful that he doesn’t have to exist on a diet of artery-clogging takeout and that it’s nice to have someone to come home to once in a while.”

Jim rubbed his side grumpily and then cracked a reluctant smile. “Maybe.”

“See!” With an air of justification, Henri pointed a thick finger at the partners. “That’s exactly what I’m sayin’ here. You two go around doing that all the time and no one thinks twice about it, get me?”

Blair eyed Henri curiously. “Uh, no?” He slanted a look up at Jim and cracked an amused grin. “You?”

“Not even slightly.” Jim shot Henri an exasperated glare. “You want to get to the point sometime before our next shift, buddy?”

“God,” Henri buried his face in his hands and shuddered. “This is stupid. Forget it, okay? I don’t know what I was thinking. Just…forget it.”

Jim stared at the bowed head of his fellow detective and reached a decision. “You’re up, Chief.” He folded his arms implacably across his chest and leaned back into the couch with the air of a man absolving himself of all responsibility for whatever was going on. “Get to it.”

Blair glared at his friend. “Wuss.”

“But a wuss that’s your ride home.” Jim settled himself even more comfortably and nodded sagely at Blair. “Unless you want to be walking home, Darwin, you better get to the bottom of this. Nobody’s getting any younger here.”

Blair snorted and spared a pointed look for Jim’s retreating hairline. “Finally noticed that, huh?” He dodged the expected head slap with the ease borne of long practice and scooted to the edge of the couch to fix Henri with a painfully earnest expression. 

“Brown, buddy?” He beamed as Henri took his head out of his hands and looked up despondently. “Hey.” Blair’s smile dimmed slightly as Henri stared at him with dull, hopeless eyes and he cleared his throat as Jim snorted in wry amusement behind him. “Look, whatever you need to say, you can, okay? We’re _here_ for you, man. Totally non-judgmental and supportive. You just gotta open up and, like, tell us what the problem is, okay? Just grab that bad boy by the scruff of the neck and drag it on out into the light and we can _totally_ deal with it. You keep those negative feelings and emotions in, man, and they’ll really screw up your karma, you know what I’m saying?”

Henri blinked at Blair and then looked slightly dazedly at Jim. “Christ, how the hell do you live with that?”

Jim grunted and tilted his head back against the couch to sigh wearily at the ceiling, “One day at a time, _man_ , one day at a time.”

Henri couldn’t help the laugh as Blair puffed up indignantly and he raised his hands in a placating motion. “I’m kidding, Sandburg, I’m kidding.” His face settled back into its unfamiliar subdued expression. “I know I’m not making much sense here; this is just real difficult for me, okay?”

Slightly mollified, Blair nodded understandingly and mentally made a note to use all the hot water in the loft for the next week to pay Jim back for his part in the mocking. “No problem. Just take your time.”

Henri stared at the two of them for a long moment and then sucked in a breath of air as he appeared to reach a decision. “Okay. Here’s the thing.” Jim and Blair waited expectantly for the thing to be revealed and then found themselves left hanging as Henri stared wordlessly at them some more. “Jesus!” He shot to his feet and headed for the kitchen. “I need another beer. You guys need another beer?”

“Uh, we’re good, I think.” Blair tilted an eyebrow at Jim in query and smiled at the headshake he got in reply. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“Right. Okay then.” Henri sucked feverishly at his beer and wiped his hand over his mouth when he finished, beads of sweat beginning to spring out on his forehead. “Okay.” He stared at the can in his hand and then looked longingly back over his shoulder at the fridge. “I think I’m gonna…”

“You’re going to sit down and tell us what the hell is going on, Brown.” Jim lost the last of his patience and narrowed his eyes warningly at his fellow detective, ignoring Blair’s annoyed hiss and fist thumping in protest on his thigh. “Or I swear I’m going to pound you into the damn ground.”

Blair covered his eyes with a hand and sighed mournfully to himself when Henri froze and stared at Jim with wide eyes. “Way to be supportive, man. Seriously, you’re like a rock here.”

Jim’s lips curved in a grim smile. “Keep it up, Sandburg, there’re enough poundings to go around.”

Blair’s mental note lengthened to include not only cold showers, but also tofu and wheat germ for Jim for the foreseeable future. And tests. Lots and lots of _tests_.

Henri looked slightly disconcerted at the evil grin that spread over Blair’s face, but none the less edged back to his seat, one wary eye on Jim. “Sorry.” He laughed weakly. “We’re all friends here, right?”

Jim and Blair both made non-committal grunts and avoided each other’s annoyed eyes.

Henri sat himself back down and gave himself a shake. He could do this. “So,” He darted one last uncertain look at Jim and Blair but then visibly relaxed as whatever he saw evidently reassured him. “Here’s how I see it. Things have…changed for me recently.” He shrugged and his eyes flickered from side to side. “Things…aren’t what I thought they were, you get me?”

Blair and Jim both stiffened and glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes. Blair swallowed hard. Oh God, Brown couldn’t be saying what he thought he was saying, could he?

“I’ve been…noticing things. _Weird_ things.” Henri swallowed hard. “Things that I thought maybe you guys could help me out with.”

Blair’s breathing started to speed up as he felt Jim go rigid at his side. Jesus. It _was_. Brown was saying that…”Oh my God.” Blair’s horrified whisper was barely loud enough to register even to Sentinel hearing. “Jim he _knows_.”

Jim, having difficulty seeing past the hazy mist of panic that was currently obscuring his vision, reached out to grip Blair’s arm in vice-like fingers, desperate for something solid to hang onto now that his most closely-guarded secret was about to be hauled out into the cold light of day. “Chief…” He barely recognised the terrified croak that emerged from his throat as his own voice. Christ, he had to get out of there.

Henri squinted in sudden concern at the two men on his couch, both looking two steps away from hyperventilating their way into unconsciousness. “Hey, you two okay? You don’t look so hot.”

Blair winced at the increase in pressure from Jim’s fingers and groped blindly to clasp his partner’s wrist. “Henri, look…” His mind raced as he tried to think of something that would explain away what Henri was trying to confront them with. “Man, I don’t know what you think you know, but…”

Henri’s mouth opened in an ‘oh’ of horrified understanding. “Hey, look, I’m not…fuck!” He shot to his feet and began to pace anxiously up and down. “You guys are my buddies, okay? I mean, what goes on between you is your business, you know?”

Jim blinked cold sweat out of his eyes. “You…you mean that?” He tried to clear his constricted throat. “Brown, if this gets out…”

Dark chocolate eyes glared in outrage. “Hey, if this comes out no one would have heard it from me, alright?” Henri shook his head. “Damn, I can’t believe you thought that…you think I would do that to you? I mean people know about you two, but they don’t _know_.”

Blair’s heart, which was just starting to calm down, picked up its panicked pace again. “ _Other_ people know?” 

Henri looked confused. “Well, sure.” He snorted a wry laugh. “Guys, you’re kinda obvious about it. Not exactly subtle here.”

Jim thought he was going to be sick. “Obvious?” He redoubled his grip on Blair, feeling the minute tremors under his hand. “Not subtle?” He blinked sweat out of his eyes again. They’d always been so careful. Not even Simon, their only confidant, realised what they were doing half the time. How the hell had they screwed up this badly?

Henri shook his head sorrowfully. “Sorry, guys. Not really.” He grinned suddenly, face suddenly lit with purpose and enthusiasm. “And that’s what I want with Rafe.” He waved a hand as both Blair and Jim jumped as though he’d pulled a gun on them and chuckled deeply. “I mean, obviously it’d be different with me and Rafe, we’re not you two, but it’s close enough for government work, right? Man, I don’t know what I was worried about. I should have known you guys would understand.”

Blair thought he was having a heart attack. Not only had he and his partner been outed in the most surprising way _ever_ , it now appeared that Brown was demanding to be taught to… “Oh man, H, it doesn’t work like that. This…what Jim and I…we can’t just teach you how to…”

Startled, Henri took a step back and held up his hands. “Whoa! _Way_ too much information there, Sandburg!” Just in case Blair missed the defensive gesture with his hands, Henri waved them emphatically in mid-air. “I got that part down, okay? Seriously, I am _there_ , babe.” He lowered his hands cautiously as Jim and Blair gaped at him and slowly sat down. “No, what I need some advice on is the…emotional stuff.” Looking like he’d rather rip his own eyes out, Henri continued, “You know, the…talking.”

“Talking?” Blair repeated blankly.

“Yeah,” Looking ever more uncomfortable, Henri nodded reluctantly. “I’ve been getting a vibe from Rafe that he wouldn’t be…that he’d kinda like to…” He cleared his throat miserably. “That maybe as partners we could be closer. Like you two.”

Jim stared. “Like us?” He turned the stare on Blair’s pale face. “Me and Sandburg?”

“Yeah, man, who else?” Henri smiled shakily. “You two have really shaken things up down at the PD, you know? I’ve been a cop for a lotta years, but, man, I ain’t ever seen partners like you and, well, then Rafe and me we got assigned to each other and…” The shaky smile turned what Blair would term coy if it hadn’t been fixed to Henri’s face. “You know that worldview you always talk about, Sandburg?” Blair nodded in a daze. “Well, mine opened the fuck _up_ , okay? Rafe and me, we just gelled, man, right from the start and I see what you guys have and I’m thinking that there ain’t no good goddamned reason why me and my partner can’t grab a little of that for ourselves.”

“Uh,” Blair dragged his tongue over his dry lips. “You wanna do what me and Jim do? With _Rafe_?”

“Yeah,” Henri nodded his head firmly. “But I want to do it right. I don’t want to screw it up, because I think this is kinda new to both of us and…” He stared helplessly at Jim and Blair and repeated urgently, “I don’t want to screw this up, okay? I want to get it right.”

Blair found himself nodding in blank agreement. “Yeah. Sure.”

Henri’s face suddenly creased in mirth. “Although we could probably skip the exploding apartments and psycho kidnappers, if that’s okay?” He pointed a finger at his two friends. “I want me and Rafe to get to where you two are, but I can definitely live without all that crap.”

“Tell me about it.” Blair muttered faintly. He looked sidelong at Jim and winced at the shell-shocked look on his friend’s face. “Hey, you okay there, Jim?”

“Huh?” Jim startled briefly, and then nodded hesitantly. As far as he could tell the sky hadn’t fallen in and the oceans weren’t boiling, but as his secret was finally out he was pretty sure it was the end of the world anyway. “I…” He scowled at his unfamiliar hesitancy and jumped to his feet. “Look, Brown, I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but it stops now. Whatever you think you know, you _don’t_ , and I don’t ever want to discuss this with you again.” He gestured at Blair still down on the couch. “What’s between us is our business and no one else’s. What we do…”

“Hey, whoa.” Blair bounded up and grabbed Jim’s arm as Henri flinched back. “Jim, rein it in, okay? You’re alright, man, we’re cool.”

“We are not cool.” Jim fairly spat the words. “This is not cool. Sandburg, you have no idea of what could happen if this gets out.” He shot a furious look at Henri. “This isn’t a fucking game.”

Henri jumped to his feet. “I never said it was, Ellison!” His face darkened. “God, you think you’re the only one here with feelings? The only cop on the force who deserves a good partner?”

Jim spluttered indignantly. “ _Feelings_? There’s a lot more than feelings at stake here, Brown. You have no idea what the hell you’re doing here, or…”

“Which is why I’m talking to you!” Henri’s indignant howl bounced off the walls. “Jesus, I thought you’d understand. So much for brotherhood!”

“Okay, time out.” Blair got between the two men and slapped a hand on both puffed up chests. “Let’s just take a minute here before we all say something we regret, okay?” He glared from one angry face to the other and repeated darkly, “ _Okay_?”

Jim batted away Blair’s restraining hand. “Get off me, Chief.” He caught the flash of fury in Blair’s eyes and forced himself to get hold of his temper. “Okay, okay. I’m calm, alright?”

Blair snorted. “Uh-huh.” He looked up at Henri. “We good?”

“Yeah.” Henri stepped back and nodded shortly. “We’re good.”

“Now, this is getting way out of hand and we need to just take a moment.” Blair took a calming breath and blew it out again. “Right.” He turned to Henri. “Look, man, you gotta see this has come kinda out of left field for us. I mean, there’s been no indication that you and Rafe, well…” He stopped short and squinted a suspicious glare at Jim. “There hasn’t been any indication, right, Jim? Nothing you haven’t told me?”

“Christ!” Jim looked equally hurt and furious as he shook his head. “You think after last time I wouldn’t tell you something like that? You think I’d risk losing you like that again?”

“No, man, I’m sorry.” Contrite, Blair moved to his friend’s side and took his arm in a firm grip. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I know you wouldn’t do that, Jim. I _know_.”

Slightly mollified, Jim nodded. “Okay, then.” He flashed Blair a tight smile, ignoring Henri’s inquisitive look. “We’re okay, Chief.”

Blair stared searchingly into Jim’s eyes and then relaxed at the steady look of affection he found there, hiding beneath the fear and frustration. “Good.” He kept a hand on Jim as he turned back to Henri. “So, here’s what I think we should do.” He tightened his grip on Jim, aware that what he was going to say next would not go down well. “I think that maybe you should talk to Rafe, just lay out honestly what you expect to get from this whole thing, maybe what he expects to get from it, and then you both gotta think seriously after that if this is what you really want. This…this is like a _major_ lifestyle choice, man, and you both gotta be sure that you know what you’re getting into, okay? Then…” Blair took another steadying breath. “Then if you both decide that this is what you want, then if you need help or advice you can come to us, okay?” His fingers dug into Jim’s arm as the Sentinel stiffened in protest. “I mean it, man, me and Jim are here for you, but we can’t do this for you.” Blair looked apologetically at Henri. “Sorry, but we learned our lesson the hard way. We gotta stay focused on us, you know?”

Henri stared at the two of them silently and then sagged, uncertainty and disappointment fighting for dominance on his face. “Yeah. I understand.” He smiled uneasily. “You really think just being honest with him will work?”

Blair nodded. “Absolutely.” He risked a glance upward at Jim’s granite expression. “Right, Jim?”

Jim’s eyes gave nothing away as he looked down at his partner, none of his relief showing that Blair was so adamant about making their partnership a priority even at their friends’ expense. “Yeah.” His lips twitched in a barely there smile. “That pretty much nails it.” He glanced at Henri. “I’m going to need a little while to get my head around this, but…I hope it works out. Really.”

Henri nodded, hearing the apology even though Jim couldn’t say it. “Thanks, Jim.”

~*~*~*

Six months later, Jim and Blair stood outside the house that Rafe and Brown had just bought between them and sucked gratefully on the cool water their friends had given them to ease the thirst a long day of moving furniture had caused. Things had been uneasy between Jim and Henri for some time after the night in his apartment, but eventually Jim had realised that Henri was serious about his pledge to keep their secret and they had settled down into their usual easy working relationship. 

Try as they might, Jim and Blair hadn’t been able to detect anything out of the ordinary about the other partners, but when Jim reported two months after the infamous talk that he was now smelling faint mixed scents on Rafe and Henri much like his own and Blair’s scents often mingled, they assumed that the talk had gone well and Henri had achieved his goal. That assumption had seemed confirmed when Brown had approached them one night as Major Crimes had been celebrating the closure of a difficult case in their local bar and hesitantly asked for their help in moving he and Rafe into a shared place.

Blair had nearly fallen over himself to agree, ignoring Jim’s own reluctance, and so they had spent their first Saturday off in weeks shifting furniture and not so subtly observing their friends for more clues as to the new nature of their partnership.

“Okay, Chief, shower and then dinner?” Jim smiled down at Blair, his body pleasantly tired from a day of hard work, and mind mellow after being in the company of friends. 

Blair stretched with a groan and nodded happily. “Man, I am so there. We’d better go and say goodbye to the guys.” He fell into step at Jim’s side as they sauntered up the path to the house, face tilted to catch the last rays of the setting sun. “It’s been a good day today, hasn’t it, Jim? A real blast.”

Jim rolled his eyes as he pushed open the door. “Yeah. This is how I get my kicks, Sandburg. Splinters and skinned knuckles and… _Jesus Christ_!” He stopped dead and stared at the two men standing together by the stairs. “What the _hell_?”

Henri raised his head from where he had been enthusiastically kissing his partner and grinned sheepishly at Blair and Jim standing frozen on the doorstep. “Hey, guys.” He released his arms from being wrapped fully around Rafe’s torso and stepped to one side, slipping an arm across the slighter man’s shoulders instead. “Sorry, didn’t hear you come up.”

Blair’s eyes bulged in his head. “ _Obviously_.”

Rafe, flushed red with a mix of arousal and embarrassment, laughed. “Got a little carried away there with the celebrating.” He looped an arm around Henri’s waist and squeezed. “I can’t believe we’re finally moved.” His face shone with happiness as he met his partner’s eyes. “It feels like it’s taken forever to get here.”

Henri beamed and pressed a dry, chaste kiss to Rafe’s mouth. “Tell me about it.” He looked up at Blair and Jim, eyes twinkling with contentment. “And we owe it all to you. Thanks, guys.”

Blair’s eyes bulged further. “ _Wha…_?”

“So, you want a beer?” Rafe gestured with his head towards the kitchen. “We could call out for a pizza or something? It’s the least we can do.”

Jim’s hand clamped down onto Blair’s shoulder, warning him for once in his life to keep his damn mouth shut. “Thanks, but no thanks.” Hoping to god his shock didn’t show on his face, Jim tugged sharply and pulled Blair back out the door. “We just wanted to say goodnight. We wanted to head home and get a shower, let you two get…settled in.”

Brown leered. “Yeah, man, I know what you’re saying.” He squeezed Rafe tightly and his hand drifted down from his partner’s shoulder to somewhere that neither Jim nor Blair wanted to think too deeply about. “I kinda want to get some shower time myself.”

“Oh my _God_.” Blair’s high-pitched yelp had Jim wincing and clapping a hand over his mouth.

“Well, okay then.” Radiating friendliness and tolerance, Jim ignored the puzzled looks on Rafe and Brown’s faces at Blair’s outburst, and smiled widely at them. “So, we’ll just be going now. See you at work!” He removed his hand from Blair’s mouth, spun him sharply around the face the street and shoved. “Enjoy your night.”

Blair stumbled as he tried to shoot an incredulous look over his shoulder at his partner and hissed, “Oh my God. Jim, they’re…”

“Sandburg, shut up and get in the goddamned truck.” Jim gave Blair another hefty shove and shot another bright smile to the two puzzled-looking men still standing in the doorway watching them. “Get _in_.”

Blair fumbled with the door, finally got it open and fell inside. “But, Jim, they’re…”

“I _know_ what they’re doing, Sandburg.” Jim jammed the keys in the ignition and growled, “Now put your damn belt on, wave and let’s get the hell out of here.” He followed his own advice with a hasty wave in the direction of the house and then peeled away with a screech of tires before Blair had managed to tug his seatbelt across his body.

Silence reigned in the truck for the first five minutes of the journey, each man lost in his own thoughts, before a muffled snort escaped Blair. He rolled his eyes apologetically at Jim when the other man glared at him in warning, and then jammed a fist into his mouth as another snort escaped.

“Sandburg,” Jim’s eyes narrowed as he yanked on the steering wheel and sent them flying around a corner. “I swear to God…”

Blair folded over as far as his seatbelt allowed and began to shake with helpless laugher. “Oh…oh…. _man_.” Tears began to leak from his eyes as he began to fight for breath. “Man, and…all this…time…we thought…”

Jim’s teeth ground together. “Sandburg, I’m warning you…”

Blair began to hiccup. “So…n-not a…Sen-sentinel then. Brown’s _g-gay_!”

“I’m going to _kill_ you.” Jim promised darkly. “I’m going to bury you so deep they’ll still be looking for you a hundred years from now.”

Blair clutched his ribs and laughed harder. “God, I think I’ve…strained something.” He continued to laugh as Jim cursed and swore dire retribution under his breath and then straightened abruptly as a sobering thought occurred. “Wait a minute…if Henri asked us over to his place that time to talk and it wasn’t about being a Sentinel, then…” His eyes widened comically as Jim shot him a pointed glare. “Oh no. Come _on_. He thought we were…”

“Yeah.” Jim stared out the windshield. “He thought we were…together.”

“Oh.” Suddenly completely devoid of humour, Blair sat bolt upright in his seat and joined Jim in staring out the windshield. “Oh _man_.”

“Uh huh.” And Jim listened to the sudden pounding of Blair’s heart, noted the high tide of color staining his cheeks and thought… _What if_?

~*~*~*

The End.


End file.
